The following is an update on many of things that have been going on with IPTA.
IPTA Board Meeting
IPTA will hold its next quarterly board meeting on Wednesday, July 21, 2010 at our Fall Conference site, Four Points Sheraton in Fairview Heights. Please let me know if you plan to attend, so that I can plan for space accordingly. An agenda will follow in a couple of weeks.
Downstate Transit Improvement Fund (DTIF)
IPTA worked with all of the applicants for this program to develop our recommendations for the expenditure of the $17.5 million in this capital fund. As requested by IDOT, we made these recommendations to them back in mid April. Since two months later we had still not heard any word on an approval of a program, I asked our lobbyist, Molly Rockford, to inquire about the program's status. She was told that the Governor's office will be announcing the program within a couple of weeks.
FY11 State budget/Other Legislative Issues
The Illinois General Assembly finalized a FY11 budget on May 26, 2010. Included in HB 859 were the Downstate Operating Assistance Program (DOAP) appropriations, which reflected of the requisite 10% increase for current grantees and included new appropriations for rural Champaign County, Whiteside County, and Clark County (as part of East Central Mass Transit District). In the RTA region, their debt service funding and their state matching funds were fully funded, but they did not receive an appropriation for $37.7 million in reduced fare reimbursement they have received in the past, nor did they get the funding they were promised in a Memorandum of Understanding they entered into with Governor Quinn last December to avoid CTA fare increases. They are hoping to receive some or all of this funding from the Governor's discretionary pot of funds.
It should be said, that while this budget has passed the Legislature, the Governor has not yet acted on it, so we'll keep you posted.
One of IPTA's legislative initiatives this spring was HB 5732, which requires IDOT to develop a pre-application process for potential new DOAP recipients. It requires IDOT to approve a funding level for new applicants, and recommend that funding level to the Governor for the following fiscal year. The legislation also clarifies that if an existing DOAP grantee were to expand their service area by annexation or intergovernmental agreement, then their appropriation could exceed the 10% increase for the following fiscal year. HB 5732 passed both houses and is awaiting action by the Governor.
Another issue that we worked closely with the RTA region on was the Seniors Ride Free initiative. There were a couple of proposals that were considered in the General Assembly this spring, in an effort to reduced the number of required senior free rides by tying the free rides to income level. The Seniors Ride Free program has been a significant cost to many providers, especially those in northeastern Illinois. Unfortunately none of the proposals considered this spring made it through both houses. Hopefully, there is more success with this measure in Veto Session.
Proposed DOAP Administrative Rules
IPTA put together a committee of several members that worked diligently to craft comments to IDOT's proposed DOAP Administrative Rules. We submitted our comments to IDOT on April 26, 2010. This week we received a response to the comments from IDOT. Those comments are in the attached pdf document. Please review this response, and if you are interested, we will schedule a follow-up committee meeting to discuss whether further comments from IPTA are needed.
DOAP Transfers
You may or may not be aware of this issue, but IPTA had been working for some time now with IDOT and the Department of Revenue to assure that all areas of the State that should have a portion of their sales tax transferred into the Downstate Public Transportation Fund, were actually transferred from. There were several counties that were not being reflected in the transfers, that should have been. This issue is finally resolved, and all of the appropriate counties are now reflected in the transfers. Transfers have been directed from each of those counties going back to the beginning of FY10. This is a net gain for the fund for the first 10 months of the fiscal year of about $10.3 million.
2010 Fall Conference
By now hopefully you all know that our Fall Conference is September 13-15, 2010 at the Four Points Sheraton in Fairview Heights, IL. We have a very exciting agenda planned, one that I believe has something valuable to offer for everyone. Conference registration will be mailed in mid-July. We are still seeking sponsorships, so if you know anyone who might want to take advantage of any of our wide array of sponsorship opportunities, send them my way. Also, if your agency has any "trinkets" (for lack of a better term) that have your logo on them, that you would like to donate to put in participants' packets or for giveaways at the golf outing, please let me know. We'll gladly accept them!
IPTA Website
Just a reminder: to login to the members only portion of our website, use your email address as a username and "test" as the password. It is case sensitive, so if you have trouble logging in, please let me know, and I'll take a look at how your email address is entered.